In preparation for watching the TV series for the first time, I subjected myself to the Kristy Swanson film.
It wasn’t all bad. “Kill him a lot” is probably going to go into my bag of phrases I’ll constantly be on the lookout for a chance to use. And Kristy Swanson herself, from the neck down anyway, was pretty easy on the eyes.
Did Hauer contract bell’s palsy during filming, or was that … acting?
I did that too, watched the movie before watching the series for the first time. The movie’s painful, but it serves one noble purpose: it makes the series that much more awesome. From the first episode, you have a deep appreciation for folks who can actually act. Paul Reuben wasn’t even taking the movie as seriously as he might have, even though it’s not even all that serious. Still, he’s probably the most amusing thing about it.
I will say one thing. Kristy Swanson looks a hell of a lot more like an airhead Buffy than Sarah Michelle Gellar does.
You really don’t need to see that movie to see the show. They dropped the whole cramps vampires sense she has in the movie. Oh, and she’s a sophomore in the show when it starts instead of a senior, which I think she was in the movie.
And the show is funny. And smart. And well acted.
Well, at least you will get a few S1 references(about her life in L.A.).
So I had heard. Still, I wanted the full experience. It’s the same reason I watch Star Trek V when I go through the Star Trek movies. Take the bad with the good; the bitter makes the sweet all the better.
As said, the show’s continuity doesn’t match up with the movie’s. However, if you’re ever interested you can check out the later comic book adaptation of the movie, which brings it in line with TV show continuity. There’s also a comic storyline that takes place after the movie but before the TV show that features Buffy and Pike going to Vegas.
I want to say that there’s a novel I read that involves Pike coming to Sunnydale, but I’m foggy on specfiics after reading so many crappy Buffy novels over the years.
All that said, I love the movie. Anybody going into it expecting anything remotely like the TV show will, of course, be disappointed, but I think the movie is tons of fun and it sits right alongside my DVDs of the TV show. There are tons of great lines.
“What’s the biggest threat to the environment today?”
I like the movie for what it almost was, but I don’t connect it to the TV show in my mind. The movie was a campy over the top take on teen horror/action movies and vampire movies in general. The show is a whole lot less shallow.
If you haven’t watched Buffy before KneedtoKnow, then you are in for a treat. Angel is good also and they are kinda fun to watch side by side (starting Angel at the appropriate time in continuity of course.)
Trivia bit - One actor, and one actor only appeared in both the movie version and television version of “Buffy” - Nicholas Brandon. But Brandon is merely an extra in a large gym crowd scene, so he’s very missable.
My girlfriend and I are helping each other fill in gaps in our geek literature, and we’re actually going to run three “monster-of-the-week” prone shows side by side: X-Files, Buffy, and Angel. X-Files has about four seasons before Buffy starts, but once Buffy starts, we’ll probably watch whole seasons of X-Files then the same year’s whole season of Buffy. Once Angel starts, we’ll probably go to watching the Buffy and Angel episodes interlaced, since I’m led to believe storylines often interweave.
And somehow in all of that, I have to force-feed her 6 seasons of 24 before Memorial Day.
EDIT: KneedtoKnow? Ow. Makes me sound like a wrestler.
Oh, hell, Buffy and Angel interweave? I was under the impression Angel went off to do his own thing that had nothing to do with the Buffy plot, hence the spin-off. Damn.
The bit in the Dean’s office where she pegs a fly to the wall by spitting a pushpin at it remains one of my favorite sight gags of all time. The idea of “you really have no idea who you’re talking to, do you?”
:smack: That’s what I get for typing your name out instead of copy/pasting like I normally do.
You should have a lot of fun watching those side by side. The storylines of Angel/Buffy do intersect though not as much as you might have been lead to believe. There is an episode where you see Angel having a phone conversation will Willow and I think that you see Willow’s side of the conversation in the Buffy episode. But I am not 100% sure about that (I didn’t watch them side by side, I tired to but I would get caught up in what was going to happen in one series and wouldn’t want to wait and before I knew it I was a whole season ahead.)
There are only a couple of Buffy/Angel episodes that demand to be watched back to back. “Fool For Love” needs to be paired with “Darla.” Likewise, the Angel episode “Redefinition” needs to be followed by the Buffy episode “Crush.” Other than that, they free-float.